


Our Bodies Bend Light

by lovetincture



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Beekeeping, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Prompt Fic, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 06:40:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18138746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: They got married. Of course they got married.Snapshots in a relationship. There's a jar of bees in the bookstore and a cottage in Sussex. Sherlock's not the marrying kind, and John's tried this once before, but they're Sherlock and John. Of course.





	Our Bodies Bend Light

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this tweet](https://twitter.com/LRBbookshop/status/1106919280921247744):
> 
> _if you were or are the friendly gent (blue coat) who was in the shop half an hour ago and left a big jar of bees on the table in the poetry section, please come back and reclaim your jar of bees. if you aren't, please rt until we find him #FindTheBeeGent_
> 
> _charlie says they're too large to be bees but i've started the hashtag now so it's too late to change it_
> 
> _-LRB Bookshop_

Even after all these years, John was still learning new things about Sherlock. For instance, apparently Sherlock had a lifelong fascination with bees.

“Bees?” He’d asked the day he found out.

“Bees.” Sherlock confirmed. “The order to them is magnificent. Such intricate systems. I think I should like to retire to the countryside and keep bees one day.”

John’s face must have shown something at that, some hint of betrayal at an uncertain future. The thought that arose before he could tamp it down that said,  _ if you retire, where will I go? _

“You’ll come too, of course.” Sherlock said, slipping his marvelous intellect into the gaps in the conversation, into things unsaid. Allaying John’s fears without giving the slightest hint he knew what he was doing.

“You’re so brilliant all the time,” John said. “Even by accident.”

“Nothing is an accident, John. Surely you know better by now.”

* * *

That was the day John learned he had a home and a future with Sherlock Holmes, and he stopped trying to look so far ahead. They would end up together in a cottage somewhere green and warm—Sussex, maybe. The thought was a balm against the storm that was his mad, often infuriating flatmate.

When Sherlock was cruel, when he was insensitive, when he relapsed, when he stopped talking for days at a stretch, well—John knew how it would end.

In a cottage with bees buzzing along outside, with Sherlock still driving him mad when he wasn’t making him whole. With John using a cane once again for good and Sherlock probably still trying to chase the infirmity away though sheer force of will and cleverness.

The thought never failed to make him smile.

He printed up real estate listings and left them on Sherlock’s desk. He didn’t mention it, and neither did Sherlock, but a few weeks later he found the papers sitting on top of his laptop, with a beautiful brick home circled in frenetic red ink, just big enough for two.

* * *

They got married. Of course they got married.

Not “of course” because that was what people did when they loved one another—John had done that once, and it ended spectacularly badly. In a still-born child and an assassin wife, in an aquarium with blood and pain. John knew perfectly well you could love a person fierce and long and well without ever bringing it to the register office.

And Sherlock, well. He was hardly the marrying kind.

But  _ of course, _ because John had been married once before, and it had ended badly; but he still couldn’t think of anything he’d rather be besides Dr. John Watson, blogger, friend, and husband of Sherlock Holmes. Because Sherlock wasn’t the marrying kind, but he took a particular possessive glee in calling John  _ my husband _ in front of the coppers at Scotland Yard that used to sneer and call him a freak.

“You know most people get married and then make retirement plans,” John said lying in bed one night.

Sherlock scoffed. “Most people are terribly dull.”

Mostly  _ of course, _ because they were Sherlock and John. They were John and Sherlock.

Of course.

* * *

As a wedding present, John got Sherlock a beehive. Just a small one, set up at a community garden in Camden just a ten minute cab ride from Baker Street. They rode there together on a sunny weekend morning. Sherlock tried to deduce his way into spoiling the surprise the whole time, and John was immensely gratified at his inability to do so.

Sherlock wasn’t the only one who’d learned a few tricks over the years. John had been planting false clues for weeks, leaving receipts crumpled in his coat pockets and red herrings in his computer history. He used his computer at the clinic to make the arrangements from an email address Sherlock didn’t even know existed.

It had taken a month of careful plotting, the likes of which would make Mycroft proud, and it had all been worth it to see the rare confusion give way to simple, uncomplicated joy. Sherlock grinned ear to ear as John showed him to his hive, and he took over the tour, explaining excitedly to John what each part was, what it did, what it was for.

He was chattering a mile a minute, the way he sometimes got on a particularly good case, and John thought he had perhaps never seen Sherlock so happy.

If he thought Sherlock would scoff at the name of the place, Phoenix Garden, he was sorely mistaken.

“Rebirth,” Sherlock commented.

John hummed in agreement. What could you add to that?

There wasn’t any guarantee Sherlock wouldn’t piss off the workers enough to get kicked out, but John wasn’t particularly worried. He was happy now, and that’s what counted.

* * *

John looked up from his laptop. “Sherlock, have you seen this ‘Find the bee gent’ business?”

Sherlock frowned over the hive he was currently constructing on their kitchen table. “No,” he said around the pencil in his mouth.

Nothing about this was unusual. They still consulted for the Met, but the cases were fewer and farther between. They didn’t need the money, and Sherlock found tending his hives at Phoenix Garden engaging enough these days. He had reams of notebooks full of notes about his bees’ movements as detailed as his treatises on cigar ash.

Between his own stiff hips and knees that were finally protesting years of abuse, John couldn’t be sorry for the slower pace they’d settled into. He remembered the adrenaline-junkie he’d once been with fondness, but he didn’t envy the bloke.

“Seems some fellow left a jar of bees in the London Review Bookshop, says he was in a blue coat.” John’s eyebrows made a valiant attempt to meet with his hairline, which was looking rather more silver than blond these days. “Sure you don’t know anything about that?”

_ The _ coat had been charcoal black for as long as John had known him, but the Belstaff had finally given up the ghost. John had given him a new one in its place last Christmas, deepest midnight blue, and Sherlock wore it just as religiously as the other.

Sherlock took the pencil out of his mouth and made a few markings on the corner of a wooden frame. “Why would I leave bees in a bookshop?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” John said sunnily. “Same reason you left the Bunsen burner on in the flat last month and nearly gave Mrs. Hudson a heart attack? Because you’re Sherlock Holmes and the concerns of we mere mortals are beneath your notice?” They were the same words he’d have used to voice real grievances, once upon a time, but now they held nothing but fondness.

John got up to find something to eat. Hopefully they had something in, and he dropped a kiss to the top of Sherlock’s head in passing. His hair was threaded through with grey but no less wild than it had ever been. Sherlock didn’t reply to that last bit, and John didn’t expect him to. Probably he’d stopped listening.

“Those weren’t bees,” the detective said at last.

John stuck his head out from behind the fridge door and raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“They were hornets,” Sherlock said with a grin.

**Author's Note:**

> Title loosely based on the incredible poem ["Our Bodies Break Light"](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/our-bodies-break-light) by Traci Brimhall. It's my favorite, and while we're talking of beekeepers...
> 
> You can also check out my [original writing here](https://hopezane.com) if you're interested.
> 
> [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture) | [Tumblr](http://lovetincture.tumblr.com) | [Dreamwidth](http://lovetincture.dreamwidth.org)


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